


a friendly town

by the_cosmos_lonely (dheiress)



Series: Missing Episodes [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, M/M, Memory Loss, Screenplay/Script Format, Spoilers, Spoilers to both podcasts, Time is Weird, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, Weirdness, no beta we die like archive assistants, tw: claustrophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23922676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dheiress/pseuds/the_cosmos_lonely
Summary: Jon? …Archivist?  Have you ever had someone with a crush on you?  Perhaps it is already something more than a crush?It all seems so…insidious, isn’t it? The way their attention hones in on you like a lighthouse on a ship. The way you see the lines of your life reflected in their staring eyes, and you can’t help think, do I really look beautiful like that, so perfect?(Statement of Dr. Carlos [REDACTED], regarding a friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead as they all pretend to sleep.)
Relationships: Carlos/Cecil Palmer, Jonathan Sims & Carlos The Scientist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: Missing Episodes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/291566
Comments: 125
Kudos: 466
Collections: The Witch's Woods





	1. #??????? (01)

**Author's Note:**

> Who binged listened to TMA for a week? Me. Who could not simply listen and savor it but must connect it to another of her favorite podcast? Also Me. 
> 
> I suppose this works as an introduction to WTNV for those who only listens to TMA and for those who only listens to WTNV...it's like a simple nostalgic walk down the memory lane. Set vaguely in TMA Season 2, in Night Vale...well time works different in Night Vale anyway so it doesn't really matter.
> 
> TMA Spoilers: Mostly up to Ep. 40  
> Night Vale Spoilers: Up to Ep. 100

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Statement of Dr. Carlos [REDACTED], regarding a friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead as they all pretend to sleep.

**[Click]**

**ARCHIVIST**

—pologise for the tape recorder…Doctor, you’re certain you are feeling well enough to give a statement? Are you experiencing headaches again?

**SCIENTIST**

Yes, yes. No, sorry, I just felt as if I saw that mic before. **[Sighs]** I just don’t remember where…Please continue, Mr. Head Archivist.

**ARCHIVIST**

…Alright. Statement of Dr. Carlos **[A Loud Rumbling Noise, drowning out the rest of the name]** regarding…?

**SCIENTIST**

A, uh, a strange…no, uhm, a _friendly_ desert community…where the, uh, **[Chuckles]** the sun is _hot_ , the moon is beautiful and… **[Very slight crackling, as if The Scientist is speaking through a thin film of water]** mysterious lights pass overhead as we all pretend to sleep.

**ARCHIVIST**

…Statement recorded live from subject **[A Loud Rumbling Noise, drowning out the Date]**. Statement begins.

**SCIENTIST**

**[Sighs]** I suppose it started with the volcano pet project in elementary school like with everyone else. But really as far as I could remember, I’ve always wanted to be a scientist. You know, to be able to look at something and, simultaneously, know— _explain_ how they work. To, ha, _discover_ the world through my microscope and formulas and somehow, somehow make it better. So I hope it won’t be surprising when I say that the moment I heard about these fantastical rumors of this town out in the desert, where time and gravity works differently, I… _immediately_ asked for a Sabbatical from the University to investigate—I was teaching prior that… I think.

…No, no, I was teaching, I’m certain of it. I remember so clearly what Sylvia, uhm Sylvia Kayali? Another member of the faculty, said. She said, “They’re probably _just_ rumors, Carlos.”

And I said, “That’s why I’m going to investigate, Sylvia. That’s our role as scientists, isn’t it? Investigate, investigate, and investigate. Gather the facts, analyse the facts, make hypotheses with the facts, gather more facts according the hypotheses. Then, _and only then,_ make a conclusion. That’s how science works!”

**[A Long Sigh]** It gets…fuzzy after that. The next thing I can recall is that I’m in Night Vale already, it was really **[Feedback Crackle]** the most scientifically interesting town in the US **[Feedback Crackle Stops]** , and I was really excited to figure out what was going on. I wasn’t alone, there were also other scientists that came into Night Vale with me, although I don’t… **[In A Pained Tone]** quite remember their names.

**[A Beat, his voice becomes cheerful again]** We rented the space next to this pizza place, “Big Rico’s”? **[Feedback Crackle]** No one does a slice like Big Rico. No one. **[Feedback Crackle Stops]** We had pizza every Thursdays—I mean on what we assume to be Thursdays. On our first day, the first thing we noticed is that _clocks don’t work in Night Vale_. We stopped trusting any time telling device after that. And for good reason, my alarm clock grew… _teeth_ in what should be the space for batteries in a few months or so. It was very _alarming_ , **[Weak Laughter]** ha ha, to say the least. I admit I was very concerned and scared at that time…but also very curious **, [In A Low Whisper]** _so very curious_. How could an assembly of inorganic matter give birth to a very organic matter? _It doesn't make sense._ Was it radioactive decay? But there were no signs of radioisotopes in my home or in the lab or in the clock or in the teeth themselves.

Not even the normal atmospheric level.

I had the teeth looked into by a colleague. As far as she was concerned, they were a complete healthy, if a little bit cramped it happens I was told, set of human teeth. A girl’s, estimated to be nine years old.

The clock still works, of course, despite having a set of teeth as its batteries.

A week after that, the teeth started chomping down. I didn’t quite realize what it was doing at first, but as I sat there on my bed in the middle of what seems to be the night, transfixed, watching…It was _hungry_. **[Very Faint, Almost Inaudible Crunching Noises]** Before it was just a static set of teeth that inexplicably grew inside the space where the batteries should be in my alarm clock but now it munched on the springs and gears inside, I can still hear even now the metallic crunching noises it made. **[Almost Audible Munching Noise]**

The teeth grind and grind _and grind_ **[Munching Noises Intensifies]** and I watch and I watch and _I watch_ until the inside of what has been my clock must have been emptied and the teeth start _gnawing_ on the plastic casing and the glass and I see the tiny hands of the clock folding into little arrows going into the space between the teeth and the cracked glass cracking further as the teeth munched through them and then—

Then it stopped **[Munching Noises Stops suddenly]**.

At this point, it was nothing more than a floating set of teeth, with an impossible darkness between where batteries should have been placed. I sat there on my bed, unhelpfully cocooned by cold sheets, mind blank yet alight with a myriad of explanations that do not fit. And then, that floating set of teeth gave me…a grin, slow and wide, before each tooth fall, one by one, without any more ado down on the wooden surface of my bedside table.

I took them to my colleague again and she was fascinated by them when I told the loose teeth were from the set in my ex-alarm clock I’ve shown her the week before. She said she hadn’t seen a girl’s teeth, nine years old of estimate, age into a man’s, thirty seven years old of estimate, in a space of a week.

**ARCHIVIST**

…

**SCIENTIST**

**[Loud Sigh]** …I’m sorry. I don’t think I did this statement quite right. The clock was the least of it. I should’ve started—

**ARCHIVIST**

The least…?

**SCIENTIST**

**[Faint Static Vibration]** —arted with the House That Doesn’t Exist or the thing in the pin retrieval area of lane five of the Desert Flower Bowling Alley. **[Chair Scrapes Against the Floor]** I, I should have started—should have started with _Cecil._ You’re like Cecil, in a way, Mr. Archivist. **[Static Vibration Intensifies]** Only _you_ listen while _Cecil_ speaks and I _watch_ and I should have started with the Old Oak Doors _—_ **[Vibration Stops, replaced by Retching Sounds]**

**[A Heavy Thud]**

**ARCHIVIST**

Dr. Carlos—?!

**[Click]**

* * *

**[Click]**

**ARCHIVIST**

Post-statement.

The statement of Dr. **[A Loud Rumbling Noise]** , already complicated by the fact that it seems to have occurred across the ocean, is further rendered _unique_ by the manner in which the scientist have come to the Institute.

I use the word ‘come’, although other words may be more suitable.

On the afternoon of **[A Loud Rumbling Noise]** ,Dr. **[A Louder Rumbling Noise, almost angry]** was found unconscious atop an old wooden, oak perhaps, door floating on the Thames. The official description given of him was a man of indeterminate age **[Faint Static Vibration]** with dark and delicate skin, black hair with a dignified, if premature, touch of gray at his temples, and a strong, square jaw and _teeth_ like a military cemetery.

He was only wearing worn jeans and a laboratory coat, all pockets empty except for a note. A note, that for all Dr. **[A Loud Rumbling Noise]** exposure to the elements remained crisply dry and vibrant white, that became the reason why he was turned over by the Met to the Institute. It said, in fresh red ink, “To The Magnus Institute, please.”

Dr. **[A Loud Rumbling Noise]** claims no memory of how he or the note had got there upon waking. He claims no memory about a lot of things. He doesn’t match any of the missing persons’ case in London or in the nearby areas.

Elias has asked Sasha to help prepare Dr. **[A Loud Rumbling Noise]** a living space in the Institute, meanwhile he’s currently being housed in a more peaceful version of the researcher’s dormitory and will continue to do so until we have helped regain most of his memories or until...someone claims him, I suppose.

This is, uh, the first of what I expect to be a series of statements from Dr. **[A Loud Rumbling Noise]**.

Martin has poked around the web and found nothing of relevance to either the University Dr. **[A Loud Rumbling Noise]** says he has worked for or the town he has allegedly visited. Neither The University of What It Is nor the town of Night Vale appears on the internet. Tim did manage to locate, from the Archives itself, a very old tourism poster that shows nothing but an empty stretch of desert at either dusk or dawn and the stark white words at the bottom that say, “Welcome to Night Vale. The View is literally Breathtaking.”

**[Click]**

* * *

**[Click]**

**ARCHIVIST**

Supplemental.

The scientist…I’ve taken to calling him that since any mention of his last name is…redacted from the recordings. I heard his name in person, I said it in person but somehow playing back the tapes, every single mention of it, and of also any date related to him in any context, is blotted out by a disturbing rumbling noise. The kind that starts at the roots of one’s teeth and ends in a blood curdling scream. I don’t know what to make of him.

He appears benign, very polite and curious, although I have learned enough now that appearances can be very deceiving and must not be trusted, and manages to get into the good graces of almost everyone.

Well, almost everyone.

Here’s something else I don’t know what to make of:

**[Click]**

**SCIENTIST**

… **[Words Strangely Echoing]** You should have always kept a photo album with you.

**!SASHA**

…I’m sorry?

**SCIENTIST**

**[Words Still Strangely Echoing]** You always need to keep some flashlights with spare batteries and a childhood photo album by you, for after when the lights go out.

**!SASHA**

Flashlights? Oh, you mean torches…yes, the Archive has some. But I’ll bring some more to you tomorrow.

**SCIENTIST**

**[Words Still Strangely Echoing, A Faint Feedback]** When the lights come back on after the outage, we always feel like we were different people, our memories and identities were the same as always…but suddenly it will feel like costumes that didn't fit exactly, as though it all were actually brand new to us.

As though we had been switched out with someone who were exactly like us.

As though all that was familiar would ever after be strange. 

That’s why we should always keep flashlights with spare batteries and a childhood photo album next to us, just in case.

…But you _didn’t_ , did you?

**!SASHA**

… **[Rattled]** I’m sorry…I don’t know what you’re talking about, I, uh I—

**[Click]**

**ARCHIVIST**

**[Sighing Deeply]** …End Supplement.

**[Click]**


	2. #0140107 (the house that does not exist)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Case #0140107. Dr. Carlos [REDACTED]. Incident occurred in the alleged town of “Night Vale”, [REDACTED]. Statement given 1st of July 2014. Committed to tape 15th of July 2014. Gertrude Robinson recording.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild spoilers of MAG 101 (Another Twist) and MAG 135 (Dark Matter) in Gertrude’s final comments. Jump to Jon’s supplemental if you wish not to be spoiled. WTNV 46 spoilers onwards.

**[Click]**

**GERTRUDE ROBINSON**

Case #0140107, Dr. Carlos **[A Loud Rumbling Noise Like A Giant Dragging Its Prone, Misshapen Body Across Baked, Waterless Earth]** **.** Incident occurred in the alleged town of “Night Vale”, **[A Loud Rumbling Noise Like A Giant Dragging Its Prone, Misshapen Body Across Baked, Waterless Earth]** **.** Statement given 1st of July 2014. Committed to tape 15th of July 2014.

Gertrude Robinson recording.

**GERTRUDE**

I am a _scientist_.

I _love_ being a scientist.

The joy in seeing how the world works, learning why the gears turn, it’s all very…intense for me. You know, that moment when the synapses of my brain connect _just right_? When the new sights, broken into its elementary form of chemical cocktails, my eyes send inside from out spark through my neurons and find the already existing complementary mix of cocktail to create _a bang_ , a collision of thoughts, a conclusion?

Well, it’s something, right?

I love it.

Something not all of us understand, but the crux of being a scientist is being an observer first and foremost. You need to experiment; neutrally, of course, considering all the possible factors and objectively applying them, tediously changing one and only one for each iteration of the experiment. I’ve seen a lot of my assistant scientists end up with results ranging from disappointing to catastrophic because of…nudging their specimens towards their preferred conclusion due to their own biases.

“You’re risking nulling your dataset if you tilt that petri dish, Nilanjana, let the bacteria grow as it is, if it’s on the left hand side only then so be it,” I say.

You are not proving a point because, as a scientist, your job is to _see_ what the point is.

Maybe that’s why the phrase ‘seeing is believing’ was invented in the first place?

I suppose the problem would be when what you see isn’t believable, right?

I’ve been in Night Vale for a couple years now and there’s this House that Doesn't Exist, the one in the Desert Creek housing development that _looks_ like it exists, like, it's right there when you look at it and it's between two other identical houses, so it would make more sense for it to be there than not. When we look at its insides from the windows, it’s empty, walls bare and gray, our calls not even echoing, the silence eating our voice completely. But see, when we knocked on the door, when we finally had the courage to do so, after _years_ , a woman opened it, showing us a fully furnished, lived in house. She seemed angry. We moved our eyes from the patch of colored life visible from the cracked open door and to the windows where the same gray walls were seen. Nothing changed.

Do you see now? How the house doesn’t exist? It has always been there since I’ve first moved into Night Vale, even before, but apparently, it has never been there at all.

…Have you thought about perspectives? How a single object can appear differently depending on the angle it is viewed upon, metaphorically and literally? The House is like that. Even before I knocked, before the door opened to a warm living room, I think I already knew that somehow. But I’m a scientist, I needed facts, observations. Data points.

Hm, sorry. I wrote ‘hm’ because it sounded good in my mind but maybe you’d just think I’m wasting paper and ink. Maybe I am…sorry, I’m not good with words; that has always been Cecil’s forte. Even now, I’m not quite sure why I’m here, scribbling away like a madman in the scrap of paper you gave me.

I’m going to try a different tact. Read this carefully now, please.

The point I’m trying to make you see is this: something happened between then and now.

We were there, just standing around this House that Doesn't Exist—the one that _looks_ like it exists, like, it's right there when you look at it and it's between two other identical houses, so it would make more sense for it to be there than not— _That House_ , waiting for something to happen when something did happen.

That something was all the composite fiberglass doors of the house changing, turning into old oak doors with brass knobs right in front of our eyes.

Of course, we were rightfully scared but we were also rightfully _so curious_ because when we opened one of the doors, you know what we see? It was the House, walls bare and gray and we could see no other side to it but a maze of twisting hallways with walls bare and gray except for some old oak doors dotting it periodically. The Silence ate up my shout of “Hello”, not an echo escaping its hungry mouth.

What do you think I did? Staring at those bare, gray walls, a shiver of fear ran down my body, the beat of my heart breaking down into scared quivers and escaping to hide in whatever limb they can find. The Silence of The House sang louder, a deep rumbling noise like a giant dragging its misshapen body along sun-baked earth, like a scream starting at the roots of my teeth.

What do you think I did?

I think you know already.

I had to know, I had to see.

I need to.

I’m a Scientist.

So, of course, I went in.

I don’t know how long since I’d crossed that threshold, since that particular old oak door I’d opened had shut behind me, how long I’d wandered those corridors, gray and windowless—could be days, could be weeks, perhaps even _years_ —but I remember the cold. It started, well I don’t know that too, but I noticed my breath fogging the air in front me, faintly first with a thin chill settling over me. Then a few steps later, a heavily thick coldness, opaque white puffs of breath blurring my vision. Absent-mindedly, I wrapped my arms around myself, rubbing softly but vigorously.

I turned left, I turned right. I tried turning back to the door from which I came, the door that for all the twists I made I could still impossibly see whenever I look back and yet whenever I take a step back towards its, the hallways lengthened. It took me seven trials, seven instances of me turning back only to have the corridors lengthened with the same bone-shaking stride I took and effectively keeping me trembling in place, before I came to this conclusion, that the House wanted me to see that particular door but it didn’t want me to open it again.

I decided to move on, to look for another door, that was when I heard it.

A whisper, a hot breath behind my neck, raising the hairs on it, “ _Are you cold_?”

I felt my body shaking, maybe with the cold, maybe with something else. I walked on, despite this uncanny urge to look back and see _who it was._ I had an inkling but biases always skew scientific results. So, I walked on, trying to chase another old oak door with another brass knob. The voice followed, always a hair breadth away, it could be a woman’s or maybe a man’s, I’m not sure, it was a faint whisper echoed by the bare house into an unrecognisable distortion.

_“Just a little bit?”_

There was a moment that I couldn’t resist it, that I looked back.

Nothing.

Just a gray, windowless hallway that ends in absolute darkness. I could no longer see the door I came through. I peered into the other corridors, there was no door left.

My skin prickled.

_“Feel a thin chill on your skin?”_

I turned left, and left, and left, maybe I did a right somewhere but I don’t remember anymore. There was an up, there was a down, I followed both. The voice followed me too as the corridors went on and on and on.

_“You’re so cold.”_

I was so cold, but I’ve been so cold for a long time then, it didn’t register at all.

_“What about your ears and nose? So very, very cold.”_

Perhaps, I lost my nose and ears, it was so cold. But I needed, _need,_ to know. I must find a door. I need more data. The hallways pulsed around me, the corners constricting until there was not but an inch between my shoulders and the gray windowless concrete, and even that inch was constricting further. My chest constricted in answer, my heart wild inside. Dimly, I felt the air getting thinner, as if I’m hiking up a mountain which did not exist in Night Vale.

Do you remember the laws of conservation? How the amount of the conserved quantity at a point or within a volume can only change by the amount of the quantity which flows in or out of the volume?

My legs feel tired, the corridors go on and on, but I didn’t feel as if I’m getting somewhere, maybe I was just standing there in the middle of the House That Doesn’t Exist all along. Maybe the walls had been the ones moving in the first place. It would fit neatly with my observation of them slowly creeping towards me. Another thought sparked inside me, another start of an hypothesis as the walls throbbed towards me, inch becoming millimeter, I wondered, _what flows out as the walls flow in?_

The walls were bare as well as floors, I was the only one there and as I took a deep breath to steady myself the answer came to me at the same moment it whispered again, this time right next to my ear.

_“There can't be much air left.”_

I ran, of course.

Of course, I did.

I heard the laughter, faint but doubled down by an echo that shouldn’t exist in a house that didn’t exist. It followed me as I ran, panting, squeezing myself along the narrowing corridors, I turned left, I turned right, I couldn’t turn back now. The walls hit my shoulder and I had to move forward sideways, my chest and back scraping the rough gray walls. I felt something giving, my skin chafed raw through the shirt and the laboratory coat I’ve worn.

I held an arm out, trying to map my way through the hallways with my fingertips. I couldn’t breathe, there’s no more air left, the windowless walls pressing down upon me, but I _moved_. I had to.

Or I think I moved. At that point, I didn’t know anymore where my flesh ended and the concrete walls began. My heart kept on beating though, the _thump, thump_ so hard I thought I was choking on it. I recalled thinking, _do the walls feel my heart beat?_

It probably didn’t, my fingertips strained forward, trying to find anything that was not cold concrete. Was I standing in a hallway? Or was I lying on the floor? I took too many turns, so many twists, I couldn’t tell anymore.

My thumb slipped against cold concrete, my index finger, too. My middle though. My middle finger slid against cold smoothness but a different kind of cold smoothness than the walls. I cracked an eye open, I didn’t even know I closed it, and what I saw made me struggle, made me try to reach it despite the crushing walls around me.

It was a brass knob.

I must have dislocated my shoulder, must have skinned myself wedging forward, it certainly felt like it, but I’d managed to grasp and twist it open and the cold, grey concrete crumbled away, revealing an old, oak door attached to the brass knob. Suddenly, the space between the walls was back to its original width and there I was standing between them, breathing gratefully, my hand gripped tight around a brass knob with an old oak door. The door was not a part of the walls, but rather an unsupported structure in the middle of the hallway.

_Knock, knock,_ came from the other side of the door. Even when I see there is nothing there.

_Knock, knock,_ it said again when I simply stared at it.

What do I do?

_Knock, knock._

What do you do when someone knocks on a door?

The answer is simple.

Of course, I opened it.

And here I was, stumbling in your office…lounge? Thingy? The door disappeared behind me and you didn’t even seem to notice it. You just asked me if I was ready to make my statement and handed me a piece of paper. Told me to write it and you’ll be just outside if I need anything.

So, I did.

Here it is.

Your door is half glass, half wood and through it I see you eating a sandwich, looking for the entire world like an unassuming old woman, taking a break. But I felt the firmness of your flesh when you shook my hand, the presence of lean muscle beneath the frail looking flesh. I saw the sharp glint of your eyes behind your thick rimmed glasses, assessing.

You are more than what you say.

There is an old oak door with brass knobs, here in the middle of the room, standing unsupported by any structure.

_Knock, knock,_ came from the empty side.

It hasn’t been here before when I first stepped in, no, I don’t think so.

I will repeat. What I see is a door in the middle of the room, where before there wasn’t, now there is. It is old. It is oak. It is with brass knobs. It is standing unsupported by any structure. It is the same as the two old oak doors that I have crossed before at the same time that it is not. Something different is waiting behind this door.

_Knock, knock._

I’ll leave this paper on this table. I need to get back, time works weird in Night Vale, if it even works at all, but so does it here. Perhaps it will help you, perhaps it will not. I haven’t made any conclusion yet about the House that Doesn’t Exist, about the Old Oak Doors with brass knobs. I need more data. So I think you will understand, something about you makes me hypothesize that we are more alike than you want to be, why I will leave and open that door. Why I will cross another threshold to the unknown.

I need to see.

I _want_ to see.

After all…

_Knock, knock._

I am Carlos The Scientist.

**GERTRUDE**

**[Pause]**

Final Comments.

Night Vale.

Well, this brings back memories. It was in the eighties when I first heard of the town “Night Vale”. The exact case number escapes me now but I remember the details: a family decided to spend a summer in the hot plains of America and had somehow stumbled into a desert town called “Night Vale”.

That’s where the similarities of their statement end, however.

The child described a seemingly eternal fall into the abyss of a twisting canyon, his breath stolen from him by the scream he didn’t quite know if he really made while the mother cried of an endless desert with no sign of life, the sand dunes growing into mountains choking her with the insignificance of her lonely life at the hands of the vast, dead earth. The father talked of a sight that took his breath away, of a planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep turbulent oceans. It was so far away, so desolate, he said. And so impossibly, terrifyingly dark.

I was not the one who took their statements and when the follow up was done three days later, the father has disappeared, went to work one morning and in the evening did not come back. His office said he didn’t show up that day. They gave me the poster on his desk, a monochrome picture of a paved road along a desert, a car in the middle with a small dot of a figure next to it. In the background that takes up most of the picture is a planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. And even though the poster is only in shades of gray, you can see the black forests, jagged mountains and turbulent oceans on the planet’s surface. At the bottom are the words in capital saying, “Welcome to Night Vale. The View is literally Breathtaking.”

At the time, I surmised the town to be an experiment, for the lack of a better term, of The Vast, a sort of playground it built for the others of his kind to muck around with it. But for all its complexities, there has been no other cases involving Night Vale, and we filed it away as a one-time occurrence, an experiment that has run it short life. In hindsight, the lack of statement might have only meant that no one else has been as lucky as to escape it intact.

Except for Doctor Carlos.

The Scientist.

A lot of the entities seem to be entrenched in this House that Does Not Exist but it overall it speaks to me of The Spiral. Seeing, however, that its ritual has already been successfully stopped, there is little else I could do for the good doctor.

Very little else.

I must confess something. The statement is dated the first of July 2014 and I am mentioned to have met him that day. However, I do not recall ever greeting a Doctor Carlos on that day. I was going to make a transcript of Manuela Dominguez’s statement yesterday to better review it but when I reached in my drawer for paper, this statement is what came out instead of my blank pad.

**[Pause]**

It must be the Spiral indeed, toying with me, reminding of _doors_.

**[A longer Pause]**

There’s something else, something about the way he talked about needing to know, about seeing that makes think he’s one of our…well, it doesn’t really matter now what The Scientist had been truly is, given his willing decision to go back. As such, there is nary a chance we will be seeing the doctor any time soon, so I will be sending his statement to the Usher Foundation, our sister institute on the other side of the pond, where it technically belongs. They have their own archive regarding the town or so I’ve been told. But I will leave this recording here in my Archives.

Just in case.

**[Click]**

**[Click]**

**ARCHIVIST**

Supplemental.

I… **[Long, frustrated sigh]** don’t know what to make of this. Questions answered by questions, Gertrude saying words that doesn’t make any sense. **[Bitter laughter trailing into another sigh]**

**[Another sigh]** I found this tape in my desk drawer this morning, in the one drawer that I don’t use often. I was looking for a pen and there it was, sitting neatly alone, covered in webs. Thank god, there weren’t any spiders—

**[Knock, knock]**

**[Something fleshy bangs against a wood, presumably the Archivist’s knee jumping in surprise]**

**[Simultaneously, a door opens]**

**MARTIN**

**[Upbeat]** Hey, I brought tea.

**ARCHIVIST**

**[Rattled]** M-martin! **[Confused]** _Tea_?

**MARTIN**

**[Also confused, his footsteps coming towards Jon]** Yes, tea? Why, what’s wrong, Jon? You look…pale? **[A beat]** Is it something about a statement? Sorry, I didn’t realize you were recording—

**ARCHIVIST**

**[Still rattled, but with some snappishness creeping, ceramic clinks against the table]** I-doesn’t matter. Is it…only the tea why you came?

**MARTIN**

Uh, yeah. **[A longer beat]** You should take a break, Jon—

**ARCHIVIST**

**[Something dawning on him]** Martin, you were talking to the scientist earlier this morning?

**MARTIN**

**[Adorably confused, this is not where he though the conversation is going]** Yes?

**ARCHIVIST**

**[Fast]** What were you discussing? What, what did he say? Did he say something _interesting_?

**MARTIN**

**[Still adorably confused, but with slight panic of ‘OH NO, Is Jon interested in Carlos???’]** I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say interesting. No, nothing interesting was discussed. Just throat spiders—

**ARCHIVIST**

**[A different kind of panic and confusion]** _Throat…SPIDERS?_

**MARTIN**

**[Another different kind of panic and confusion]** Nothing creepy, he was just saying how he had to had a voice box changing surgery to prevent throat **[Jon sputters something incomprehensible in the background]** spiders— _but_ I think it was just _metaphorical…_ maybe? **[Chuckles nervously]**

**ARCHIVIST**

**[Not listening, sounds of shifting fabric, he’s getting up]** I need to talk to him _now—_

**[Click]**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiiiii I'm experimenting with workskins, if you find this format too distracting you can click on the "Hide Creator's Style" button to return to the normal you love.


	3. the voice on the radio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Statement of The Scientist regarding The Voice on the Radio.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some days you are pulling strings of words out of your brain like teeth from your jaws but then there are days that you vomit words all over the place.
> 
> TL;DR: I was going to update this sooner but got sidetracked by other new plot lines (ie. the good omens fusion AU that is just Elias/Peter being married-divorced wrecks of an angel and a demon; the other wtnv/tma crossover; the office romcom disaster; the beauty and the beast fusion etc etc you get the drift sorry)
> 
> Jon wanted his answers and I wanted to move the plot already, but Carlos wanted to wax poetry about his husband and who are we really to deny him of that?

**[Click]**

**TIM**

**[Panicked whisper]** What is… _happening_ ?

 **[Martin wordlessly answers in much more panicked ‘Do I sound like I know’ stutters]**

**[Someone hits a wooden surface, and both Tim and Martin breath sharply]**

**ARCHIVIST**

**[The voice of someone clutching his hair in frustration]** Where is Night Vale— _No_ , better yet tell me, _what. Is. Night. Vale._

**SCIENTIST**

**[The voice of a parent trying to explain a difficult concept to their child]** Well, the answers to those questions are both simple and complicated. The simple versions are these:

 _What is Night Vale?_ It is, by far, the most scientifically interesting community in the US of A.

 _Where is Night Vale?_ **[a whoosh of a breath from The Scientist]** I don’t know. Yes, I’ve been living there for more than half a decade, or at least what seems to me like more than half a decade, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know where it is.

**THE ARCHIVIST**

**[another bang! on the table, frustrated stutters]** Don’t give me that load of _nonsense—_

**TIM**

**[overlapping with Martin]** Hey, boss, maybe we should give this conversation another chance when everyone is, you know? Calm?

**MARTIN**

**[overlapping with Tim]** Jon, _Jon_ , please calm down, you’re not making a lot of sense right now—

**ARCHIVIST**

**[Definitely not calm]** Stop telling me to _calm down,_ **_I. AM. CALM._**

**SCIENTIST**

**[Calmly]** I can’t, no matter how much I want to, give you the clear cut answers you seek, Jon…I’m sorry, should I already say The Archivist? That’s not how I can work, not how _you_ work. **[Encouraging]** You have your own observations, haven’t you? What hypotheses can you form from them?

**ARCHIVIST**

**[Slowly, a faint static rises in the background]...** You’re not....exactly human. You’re somehow involved with these monsters, these entities, whatever those things that Gertrude calls The Vast or The Spiral or the others.

You’ve met my predecessor, Gertrude, you’ve been here before in the Magnus Institute.

And you remember a lot more than you told us.

**SCIENTIST**

**[Sheepish]** Only after I gave you my story...my, uh, statement, am I—am I using the right words? I keep forgetting. Cecil is a story-giver and you are a statement-taker, hm, yes. Story-giver, statement-taker. Story-giver. Statement-taker—

 **[shakes himself, tries to focus on matter]** I’m sorry, travelling through the space-time corridors always gave me headaches and I have to pay with some of my mind’s clarity for safe passage through.

 **[a hm, slightly distorted by static]**...Well, _I_ call them space-time corridors but maybe you guys have other words, other names, we all are speaking different languages for the same message. It’s the same with, what do you call them? Uh, monsters? Entities? Weird shadow people? I don’t know what you call them, Vast? Spiral? For me, they’re parts of Night Vale. The House That Doesn’t Exist, The Planet of Awesome Size, The Vacant Lot Out Back Of The Ralph’s, all of them. They used to scare me so much, these tangible abstract concepts existing outside the realm of the science I know. But then again, existence has always been tricky, incomprehensibly fragile and cruel, but still it’s the most thrilling fact of all!

Exactly the same as humanity. Being human is so interesting! So many ways to be one, so many ways to be not. I’m still a human in my opinion, although I respect your opinion if you will not agree with me— _Oh_.

 **[Soft]** ...You’re _scared_.

**ARCHIVIST**

**[Unbelieving scoffs, increasingly frantic]** Of course I am scared. _Of course I am **scared**! _My predecessor died with three gaping gunshot wounds, and I still don’t know who did it, I still don’t know _why_. And I’m rather certain my boss knows something about the why and the who but he wouldn’t tell me anything and I can’t trust any of my assistants because I know one of them is, or maybe all of them are, lying to me about something and I don’t want to end up like Gertrude! And you! Are! Not! Helping! At! All!

_So, yes. **I! AM! SCARED!**_

**TIM**

**[scandalized and angry, betrayed is him]** _Whoa, whoa!_ Is that why you were acting all off these past few months? Why you were taking pictures of my houses? _You don’t think we can be trusted? We_ are the ones you think acting suspiciously? **_Seriously_**?

Oh, for god’s sake, you _stupid_ —

**MARTIN**

**[painful, ‘Jon my love why are you like this’]** _Jon..._ you should have told us something at least—

**[Jon breathes heavily in the background]**

**SCIENTIST**

**[sighs]** I’m sorry. I know I’m not good with words, I’ve never been.

But I do remember being scared, terrified even, all the mundane things you once thought you can trust in their normality turns out to be nothing but in Night Vale. Once, you know, I discovered mould under my bed. It’s such a curious thing. I mean, it’s _mould_ , all its physical and chemical properties matches the normal mould outside Night Vale, the only difference is it’s _sentient_ and it’s eating the floorboards under my bed and I couldn’t scrub it off, it eats away whatever brush I used or cleaning chemical I doused it with. All I could do in the end was lie in my bed and fervently wish it won’t crawl up and eat me away me too.

**MARTIN**

**[curious]** ...and did it? _Ea-eat you away?_

**[Tim groans]**

**ARCHIVIST**

**[warningly, what the hell, man]** _Martin._

**[Martin makes some vaguely apologetic noises in the background]**

**SCIENTIST**

**[upbeat]** No. But it did eat away through the floor and into the landlord’s apartment and...onto the landlord himself below. **[sighs]** It was a nightmare, Night Vale doesn’t allow landlordless apartments so I had to find a new place in the middle of the Valentine’s Day Massacre.

**TIM**

**[drily]** What a horror.

**SCIENTIST**

Yes, it was. I didn’t know how the real estate agents work then, but you know how hard catching deers is while everyone is running around in mindless panic.

But things like that highlight the opposite, you know? Makes you appreciate the things that on the surface seem so strange and malevolent but then you find that underneath it was something else altogether. Something pure and innocent.

**ARCHIVIST**

**[Highly disbelieving]** _Pure and innocent?_

**SCIENTIST**

**[nostalgic laugh]** Do you have someone like that, Archivist? Someone you thought meant you harm but actually wanted the contrary?

**[nonsensical stuttering from Jon the Archivist]**

**SCIENTIST** _[cont’d]_

 **[You can hear the fond smile in his voice]** I Heard Cecil first before I ever Saw him.

It was my first clear memory of Night Vale. The movers and my team were outside of the lab next to Big Rico’s—no one does a slice like Big Rico, no one—and I was sat there in the driver’s seat, trying to remember details from the drive to the town and coming up with nothing but faint static in my ears, when I realised my hand was turning the radio on. 

The Voice on the radio was smooth and viscous like honey, the host of a quaint little radio program for a quaint little burg talking about the town’s dog park and gossip from old women. I found the cadence of his words so soothing in its surety; I couldn’t stop listening even when he started talking about dogs not allowed in the Dog Park and angels in Old Woman Josie’s house out near the car lot.

I couldn’t stop listening even when he started talking about _me_ , describing the shape of me and the things that hadn’t happened yet but I knew will come. I was going to call a town meeting, my team and I was going to investigate the seismic anomalies our machines register but we ourselves cannot feel, and I was already planning to visit the radio station given what I hear from its program. But those were things just in my head, under the imaginary column of “to-do” in the nebulous future, so I wondered, dreadfully so curious, how could the voice on the radio know that? How can it narrate these events that haven’t happened yet on air as if they’ve already happened? The Voice on the Radio talked about how perfect I was, how in love with me he was. I have never met him before.

I turned the radio off, dizzy. My skin crawling with something I thought then was apprehension. Time works weird in Night Vale, if it even works at all, sometimes the past happens after the future, and the present was a dream we all dreamt long ago. Sometimes not. There is no rhyme or reason to how time coils and eat its own tail. I didn’t understand this yet back then.

The first time I met Cecil, physically, it was in the radio station. I didn’t know his name then, he was just the Voice on the Radio to me. He was neither tall nor short, his hair short and straw blonde, his skin pale and smooth except for his forehead where rested what I thought at the time was a hyper realistic tattoo of an eye...It wasn’t a tattoo, I know that now, but that was the last time I’ve seen it. I was getting more materials, that is, I was checking the radioisotope levels of the place. My meter went crazy, beeping like a bunch of baby birds that just woke up when I tested his studio, his microphone, Cecil himself. Life in that radiation level shouldn’t have been possible but there Cecil was looking at me as if I was the scientific anomaly. And the weirdest part wasn’t the impossible radiation levels, it’s that the whole exchange happened just as he narrated one week ago, when I first heard him on the radio. I fled the studio, convincing myself it was because the fatal radiation that I ran from him.

The second time I saw him, I only recognized him through his voice. His Voice was the same as always, the deep tones crooning from the radio whatever strange or mundane happening or future happening was in the town. But his face **[chuckles softly],** his face was different. He was different. I mean, I know people are capable of changing, I had a haircut, at least before the barber was driven out of the town. But he, he apparently changes his skin tone, and hair, and eyes as easily like you can change clothes. What I first saw as pale skin has since then became olive; short blonde hair has turned to thick, waist length dark hair in a neat braid as large as my wrist; his eyes with red irises and framed by furry eyeglasses. He was asking about the tectonic shifts I’ve mentioned before. His Voice was the same, but the rest of him was not. I can’t recall now what I replied, but it must be bad, I was so distracted by a lot of things then, chasing all the scientific curiosities I saw. He was one of those curiosities, but I didn’t want to involve myself with him. Even then, something told me I couldn’t entirely objective with him.

I kept all my interactions with him strictly by phone after that. I couldn’t trust my eyes and my wildly stuttering heart but I at least could trust the consistency of his Voice. There were other scientific researches I immersed myself with, other horrors he told on the radio. He is the Voice on the radio, so I needed him to tell the town the scientific result I found that can save their lives from the current monster devouring or plaguing the town.

We still saw each other—or rather he saw me and I saw him around town. After all, Night Vale was a relatively small, almost claustrophobic place if you disregard all the spatial contortions. Every time I saw him, glimpses of a person ever changing, or he saw me, I could only tell it was Cecil by his Voice or if no words were exchanged by the smile he sent my way. Consistently stuttering, wide. Consistently blushing.

All the radios in Night Vale turn on automatically once Cecil’s broadcasts start. His Voice never changes and you couldn’t help but listen in. Sometimes he talks about me on air and I can’t figure him out all. I can’t figure out why my own heart wildly jumps out of my heart. I thought it was the terror of being known but there was too much curiosity there, too much excitement to be plain Fear. **[Static becomes more audible, we can’t pinpoint when it started]**

There were days in which he had chocolate-brown skin, silver hair and a glowing foursome of violet eyes; there were days in which he has freckled skin, no hair and yellow crescent moons for eyes; then there were days where he looked the same like the first time I saw him, only he was a she and she was mesmerizing.

There were some days, of course, where Cecil did not look like a human at all, limbs too askew and eyes too many.

Science couldn’t help me understand him and the way he always talks about me on air.

**SCIENTIST** _[cont’d]_

Jon?

… _Archivist_ **?**

 **[tone light, conversing, Jon finds it disturbing]** Have you ever had someone with a crush on you? Perhaps it is already something more than a crush? **[ ~~Martin~~ Someone makes an aborted squeak]**

It all seems so…insidious, isn’t it? The way their attention hones in on you like a lighthouse on a ship. The way you see the lines of your life reflected in their staring eyes, and you can’t help think, _do I really look beautiful like that, so perfect?_ If you don’t know better, it’s easy to mistake the answering call of your heart, the slowly fastening beat of your heart for dread, for choking panic asking yourself, _what do they want from me, why are they being so kind and attentive, there must be something they want_.

Cecil was my first, you see, and I definitely never had one before. In my ignorance of how matters of the heart work I thought him one thing when he was another.

I had to die to realise that there was nothing he wanted from me except for me, that all he wanted was my time and a little drop of my attention, that his grief at my apparent nearing absence was genuine and not the complex bait of an eldritch horror of changing skins I cannot understand.

Worse, it was in my last breath that I realised what the own beating of my heart meant, that the stuttering was not of fright, that the discomfort I feel was in no way his fault but the own fluttering of excited moths inside my stomach, that I too wanted to call him for personal reasons and ask him out for coffee and listen to his honey voice and have it soaking my ears.

**[Sighs with something we thought wistfulness]**

**SCIENTIST** _[cont’d]_

 **[Upbeat]** We’re married now and Cecil told me to tell you this: **[His voice becomes deep, hypnotic almost like someone else]**

_The gentle man in glow light is a candle in his maybes._

_His face is a loamy bog._

_Do you ever stop to look at all the blood you gather?_

_Metal haloes spring from your attention._

**ARCHIVIST**

**[disoriented at the sudden change]** Wh-what? I don’t understand—

**SCIENTIST**

**[Urgent, leaning in towards him]** Jon, _Archivist_ , listen to me, I don’t have much time left, time works weirdly for me now, if it even works at all. But I’ve been told to tell you, _this is the part when you can still change things_. The end will be the same, the end is a fixed destination I’m afraid, but how you get there will be not.

You need to see beneath the masks, you need to _see_ who to _trust_ , who to _tell the story to_. Paranoia can only get you so far down the road before eating you alive. You need to remember:

She said, _watch with all your eyes,_

Lest chance, again, escape you.

**[A beat]**

**SCIENTIST** _[cont’d]_

Don’t trust _Elias_.

**[Click]**

* * *

**[Click]**

**THE ARCHIVIST**

**[Through gritted teeth, heavy breaths]** Where is he? What did you do to him?

**“ELIAS”**

**[Placating]** What I should have done the first time he came here, I’m afraid. The Scientist is simply a disturbed man, Jon, you need to let go of him. He’s now in much more... _appropriate_ professional care.

**[Jon breathing heavily, restraining himself]**

**“ELIAS”** _[cont’d]_

 **[Sighing]** Night Vale is a very interesting place but it’s not our jurisdiction. The Usher Foundation will make arrangements for the transport of Carlos The Scientist back to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean meanwhile there are other statements, other concerns that need your attention, Jon.

I hope you find it in yourself to address them, my dear Archivist.

**[a long pause]**

_Jon?_

**THE ARCHIVIST**

**[No, it’s not fine]** _Fine_.

**[Click]**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a sequel, it’s still in transcript style but the pace is significantly different from this one and more heavily focused on the TMA bunch rather than Carlos (but he’ll be there! Cecil too, to some extent) so I’ll be posting it as another work part of the archivist your lost tapes series.
> 
> Thank you, everyone that commented and kudos’ed and bookmarked, I love you guys! When I started this thing I thought there’ll be like only two comments and ten kudos at most but somehow there’s more?
> 
> I hope to see you again!


End file.
